Americans smash Jap unit in Burma
Veterans of Pacific fighting in action in new area for first time
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500 Italians die in train tunnel
Stowaways suffocated as freight stalls
By Dana Adams Schmidt, United Press staff writer
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Army officer runs amok, kills 2 women, policeman
Lieutenant wounds five others in early morning rampage before he is shot
Bulletin
Riverside, California (UP) –
An Army lieutenant ran amok early today at Camp Anza, killed two young women and a policeman, and injured five other persons but spared the lives of a pleading 22-year-old mother and her baby. Of the five reported wounded, only one, Ray Schlegel, Los Angeles aircraft worker, was identified. Schlegel was shot when the Army officer ordered him to pull over to the curb in front of the Arlington police substation while Mrs. Schlegel begged for the life of her eight-month-old baby.
Riverside, California (UP) –
Two young women and a policeman were killed and five others wounded early today by an Army officer who ran amok, shot his way out of camp, and killed a policeman who sought to disarm him.
The officer, identified tentatively as a Lt. Swanson, was shot three times by police.
The dead were:
- Dorothy Douglas, about 19;
- Lourdine Livermore, about 19,
- A. B. Simpson, Riverside policeman.
The Army officer, identified tentatively as a Lt. Swanson, was shot three times by policemen.
The women were shot at Camp Anza shortly after midnight. The Army refused details of the shooting.
Police said Lt. Swanson commandeered an Army car at camp after shooting the women and forced a Negro sergeant to drive him into the nearby suburb of Arlington.
The car sped past the guard without pausing and the sergeant drove it to the police station. Acting apparently on orders from the lieutenant, the sergeant parked on the wrong side of the street, blocking traffic.
The first car to approach was driven by Ray Schlegel, 24, of Los Angeles, who was forced to stop. Schlegel and an unidentified sailor got out to investigate, leaving Schlegel’s wife and infant son in the car.
The Army officer brandished a gun and threatened to kill them. At this point, Policemen C. F. Cole and Simpson came out to investigate.
Schlegel warned:
Look out, this man has a gun.
Simpson and Cole spun around and simultaneously ordered Lt. Swanson to drop his service revolver.
As an answer, the lieutenant opened fire. The first two shots struck Schlegel in the chest, the next two hit Simpson in the abdomen. As Simpson fell, he emptied his gun at the Army officer, hitting him twice, Cole also fired and felled him with one shot.
Simpson died three minutes after reaching the hospital. Schlegel’s condition was reported as “good.”
The Army officer was removed to the Camp Anza hospital, where officials refused to say whether he was dead or alive.
Red Cross begins drive for 3.5 million war fund
Many groups active in advance of campaign; first report to be made tomorrow noon
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U.S. soldiers reported fighting in Yugoslavia
London, England (UP) –
A Yugoslav communiqué as record by the BBC said today that a group of Partisans “together with U.S. non-commissioned officers under an American captain” attacked German positions on the island of Hvar below Split.
The communiqué from Marshal Josip Broz’s headquarters said:
The enemy suffered heavy losses.
Hitler kin in U.S. Navy
New York –
William Patrick Hitler, 32, nephew of Adolf Hitler, reported to the Navy today for assignment to a “boot” camp. His father was a half-brother of the Nazi leader.
Anti-New Deal Democrats can’t decide on strategy
Program to block fourth term is developing along two different and almost opposite lines
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Washington (UP) –
Anti-New Deal Democrats appear today unable to make up their minds on strategy to prevent President Roosevelt’s renomination for a fourth term.
The belief that he will seek renomination is sufficiently indicated by the organization of pre-convention machinery to block him. But the program is developing along two different and almost opposing lines.
Former Secretary of War Harry H. Woodring, who left the Roosevelt Cabinet in 1940, is promoting a “third party” movement or general conservative Democratic bolt of Mr. Roosevelt’s candidacy, should he be renominated.
Indicates plan solidly founded
To this end, Mr. Woodring helped set up a Jeffersonian Democratic Conference which met last month in Chicago. After conferences last week in New York, he indicated that the third-party plan was solidly founded and that there were half a dozen or so Democrats who would be available to contest the presidential election as a Jeffersonian Democrat.
It is obvious that any Jeffersonian-Democratic presidential candidate who could take 100 or so electoral votes from Mr. Roosevelt next November would have obtained his defeat if the election were at all close.
Mentioned by Mr. Woodring as potential candidates are former Democratic National Committee Chairman James A. Farley, Senator Harry F. Byrd and former Massachusetts Governor Joseph B. Ely. Inclusion of these men among potential third-party candidates appears to shadow the whole program. Mr. Farley has told intimates that he would not bolt the Democratic Party even if Mr. Roosevelt were renominated.
Ely in different position
Mr. Byrd has already announced that he is not a candidate for the presidential nomination. Mr. Ely is in a somewhat different position. Moving boldly in Massachusetts against a fourth term, anti-New Deal Democrats have entered a slate of convention delegate candidates who would be pledged to Mr. Ely’s nomination for the Presidency. That was announced Feb. 20. It looked like a bolt or third-party threat.
But it appears now that Mr. Ely will not permit his name to go before presidential preference primaries in other states. therefore, the strategy in Massachusetts seems to coincide less with Mr. Woodring’s third-party plan than with the effort of other anti-New Dealers to obtain control of a big block of convention delegates for a convention floor fight against Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination and a do-or-die effort to prevent a New Dealer being nominated for Vice President in the event Mr. Roosevelt heads the ticket again.
Many Democrats, especially Southerners, who might be willing to fight Mr. Roosevelt’s renomination in the convention would not bolt the party to vote against him.
A leader of the Stop-Roosevelt group believes that there is some hope of preventing the President’s renomination by the strategy of preventing his supporters from lining up solid blocks of Roosevelt-instructed delegates and defeating him on the convention floor. He estimated that eight and possibly nine Southern states would send uninstructed delegations to the Democratic convention.
It is on that strategy of uninstructed or favorite-son candidates that non-bolting anti-New Dealers are relying. If they can’t lick Mr. Roosevelt in the convention, they will probably not vote against him.
Bricker: Local government No. 1 issue
Jacksonville, Florida (UP) –
Governor John Bricker of Ohio, candidate for the Republican nomination for President, said today that the big issue in the 1944 presidential election was whether local self-government shall prevail or “shall we continue the trend toward central autocratic control by the federal government.”
In Jacksonville to address the Florida State Republican Convention, he advocated simplification of the tax laws and a reduction in taxes.
Governor Bricker said that we must reduce the national debt. He said reduction of the national debt could start now with the elimination of needless boards and bureaucrats and that reduction in the federal payroll would not hurt the prosecution of the war but would help it.
Governor Bricker added:
Congress long ago should have provided laws to prohibit strikes during wartime. Congress should have provided a board before which misunderstandings could be adjudicated with fairness to both sides.
Advocating limitation upon presidential tenure, Governor Bricker said:
…continued occupancy of the highest seat in the land is a powerful weapon in the hands of the “ins” because of the desire of federal employees to hold their jobs and increase their authority.
Gangland code of silence followed to end by Lepke
Mayor La Guardia: Murder, Inc., boss had many persons ‘sweating’
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Army ‘bungling’ in tool sale due for airing
Senate expected to learn details of transaction which showed 98% loss
By Charles T. Lucey, Scripps-Howard staff writer
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Soldier vote compromise scored by CIO
Much disputed measure is headed back into new trouble in Senate
Washington (UP) –
The CIO joined the attack against the pending compromise soldier vote bill today as the measure, fresh from a three-week dispute between Senate and House conferees, headed right back into trouble in the Senate.
The bill appeared to satisfy neither advocates of state or federal ballots and both factions promised to make their sentiments known when it comes up before the Senate Thursday. The House takes up the conference report next week.
‘Technical absurdity’
CIO president Philip Murray wrote all Congressmen demanding a “simple, uniform federal ballot” instead of what he called the “technical absurdity” that emerged from conference. The net effect of the pending bill, he said, would be to disenfranchise the few soldiers who were enfranchised by the Soldier Voting Act of 1942.
He said:
This issue is a simple one – how to place a ballot in the hands of every serviceman and woman. No cloak of “states’ rights” can obscure the fact that this latest form of the bill would deny some 11 million Americans one of the great rights for which they are fighting – the right to vote.
Veto possible
The compromise, he said, is unworkable and:
Its obvious effect will be to harass the bedevil the serviceman to the point where he will give up in despair of achieving his democratic right to vote.
The pending bill restricts use of federal ballots to overseas servicemen who apply for but fail to receive state absentee ballots by Oct. 1. Another restriction provides that governors must specify by Aug. 1 that the federal ballot is acceptable to their states.
President Roosevelt has indicated he will veto the bill if he believes it would decrease rather than increase the number of men and women eligible to vote.
In Washington –
New labor draft pleas made
Mrs. Luce, Austin warn delay in adequate manpower controls may boost toll of American lives and lengthen war
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Labor policy listed by MacArthur group
New York (UP) –
A labor policy, calling for federal jurisdiction over all labor organizations and maintaining the rights both of unions to organize and of individuals to join them or not, will be presented to the Republican National Convention by the MacArthur National Associates.
If they are successful in their attempt to have Gen. Douglas MacArthur drafted as the presidential candidate, the Associates said, the proposed labor plank will be submitted for his endorsement.
The plank proposes that every labor organization shall file a copy of its constitution and bylaws with the Labor Department, that an annual report including a complete financial statement shall be made by each union to the Secretary of Labor, that union business agents be licensed by the Secretary of Labor, and that all records shall be available for public examination.
Group of U.S. clergymen scores raids on Germany
Urges Christians ‘examine themselves’ concerning ‘participation in this carnival of death’
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